31 January 2009

By piecing together different stories in the Spanish, Israeli and British press, we find that Abraham Arad Hochman, a former director of Langbar, "ex" Mossad agent* and Argentinian was one of the two 'brains' behind the fraud and was arrested by Spanish police at his luxury villa in Barcelona.

*is any Mossad agent ever really 'ex'?

According to the FT, Mr Hochman had "long been a prime target of shareholders who lost their money when the shares were suspended in October 2005."

It also stated that the UK High Court had previously "declared Mr Hochman in contempt for failing to comply with a multi-million pound asset-freezing injunction and sentenced him in his absence to 12 months in prison."

Those words were written by Sir John Troutbeck, head of the British Middle East Office in Cairo and later British Ambassador to Iraq, on 02 June 1948. He had previously written on 18 May 1948 "It is difficult to see that Zionist policy is anything else than unashamed agression carried out by methods of deceit and brutality not unworthy of Hitler." (Troutbeck to Wright, 18 May 1948, FO 371/68386/E8738 Quoted by William Roger Louis in 'The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945-1951' p.576) This was after the massacre at Deir Yassin, in April 1948. William Roger Louis notes that before WWII Troutbeck had served in Czechoslovakia and he "now believed he was witnessing the spectacle of history repeating itself."

One just has to look at all the scandals surrounding recent Israeli leaders to see that Troutbeck was not far off the mark:

Ariel Sharon was described by Labor leader Amram Mitzna, as a “godfather” running the “family” business. “There is no doubt that organized crime is apparently infiltrating a party, a ruling party,” Mitzna said, according to a Forward article. Mitzna was referring to the Likud party. The Forward article article, written by Matthew Gutman, started "It seemed like a scene straight out of the television series "The Sopranos": A group of political insiders gathers at a swank restaurant, owned by a suspected mob family, and is allegedly plied with food, drinks and cash-filled envelopes while considering nominees for plum political posts. After enough drinks and cash are passed around, the restaurant owner's 27-year-old daughter, a law student and part-time waitress, ends up poised to represent her party -- and, it's feared, her family -- in the state legislature. But the story didn't take place in New Jersey and it isn't fiction..."

Sharon of course left Likud and founded Kadima a truly gangster party. Its current chief and acting PM Ehud Olmert faces criminal indictment in corruption probes to do with a Jerusalem property deal in which Olmert allegedly bought an apartment in 2004 for $1.2 million US. He has resigned which is what prompted the upcoming Israeli elections.

"A US businessman at the centre of a high-profile corruption investigation told an Israeli court ... he gave thousands of dollars to Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, in envelopes stuffed with cash, some of which he claims was spent on expensive hotels, holidays and cigars. Morris Talansky, a long-time supporter and friend of Olmert, said he gave at least $150,000 (£75,000) over 15 years, including the years when Olmert was a government minister and mayor of Jerusalem."

In June 2007, former Israeli President Moshe Katsav resigned "after a year-long scandal in which several former employees accused him of sexual assault and harassment, and one accused him of rape. Katsav took a leave of absence from his duties in January but stayed on as president before quitting just before the end of his term. A plea deal allowed him to escape the rape charge--and jail. Israel's legislature, the Knesset, reportedly passed a resolution to strip Katsav of many perks awarded to former presidents, including a state-funded office, a secretary, and a car and driver."Israel's justice minister, Haim Ramon, "resigned on 20 August 2006, two days after he said he would step down to face accusations that he forcibly kissed an 18-year-old female soldier. Israel's attorney general announced plans to indict him on an indecent assault charge." The Tel Aviv Magistrates Court convicted him on 31 January 2007 for "non-consensual indecent acts against IDF female soldier H, who worked as a military secretary at the Prime Minister's Bureau. The judges' decision was unanimous".

Another scandal is that of Olmert's former Finance Minister, Abraham Hirchson, who was indicted for money laundering and embezzling more than $1 million from a non-profit organisation - a euphemism for saying that he stole money from the “March of the Living” project and the Holocaust. The multiple charges included theft, aggravated fraud, breach of trust, fraudulently obtaining funds, money laundering and falsifying corporate documents. Hirchson "was caught boarding a plane from Poland in 1997 with $250,000 in cash stuffed into suitcases that he planned to bring into Israel...Yaakov Weinrot, Hirchson’s lawyer, confirmed the minister had indeed been caught illegally trying to smuggle the cash into Israel and had been fined by a Polish court. But he said Hirchson had only done so because of the technical problems of transferring money to Israel from a Polish bank. " Right.

Now what 'technical problem' would that be? Oh yes, you can't legally transfer dirty money...

"Sarah Amrani, the head of his private office, is also under investigation....Hirchson has been a member of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, since 1981. He is also a member of the Board of the Special Swiss Committee for Needy Holocaust Survivors. A Filipino nurse who once tended Hirchson’s late wife told police she had seen envelopes filled with cash being delivered to him at home. Ovadia Cohen, the chairman of Nili, has already confessed to embezzling funds from the organisation."

There was a further conviction in the same case: "The Tel Aviv District Court found former National Labor Federation Director Yitzhak Russo guilty of theft, fraud, breach of trust, money laundering and other offenses. Russo was convicted as part of a plea bargain following his confession in a case involving former Finance Minister Abraham Hirchson."

Another one straight out of The Sopranos is the case of the Israeli police commissioner:Moshe Karadi, who resigned in February 2007 according to the International Herald Tribune, in order to "spare the police the harm of a scandal".

"In 1999, when he was head of Israel's southern district, Karadi failed to pursue an investigation into close ties between police officers and a crime family in the south.

In 1999, a suspected crime boss, Pinchas Buhbut, was murdered while in a hospital by a uniformed policeman working for a rival crime family, the Perinians. Buhbut was recovering from an assassination attempt and was supposed to be under police guard.

A year later, three months after he had left the police, the murderer, Tzachi Ben-Or, was arrested for a robbery and offered to testify. His offer was declined, and a judge, not informed of the Buhbut murder, released him to house arrest. Ben-Or later fled the country and was murdered himself, in Mexico in 2004.

Karadi was accused by the investigators of promoting a police commander in the southern district who was suspected of hushing up the case for the Perinian family."

Tzahi Hanegbi of Kadima, the chairman of parliament's influential defence and foreign affairs committee, was indicted "on charges of fraud and breach of trust for allegedly making 69 inappropriate political appointments while serving as environment minister between 2001 and 2003. The state has also charged Hanegbi with committing election fraud, giving false testimony, taking a false oath and attempting to exert unlawful influence on a voter."

The 33-page indictment included a list of 321 witnesses for the prosecution:

"During the course of his term of office in the Environment Ministry, the accused acted in a premeditated and systematic way to bring about the appointments of members of the [Likud] Central Committee and their relatives (their sons, their daughters, their friends, etc.) to as many positions and jobs as possible in the ministry and agencies affiliated with the ministry, while prejudicing the chances of the public at large in competing for these positions and jobs, and occasionally without being strict regarding their skills or suitability for the job,"

He had been in trouble before. In 2001 in "a dramatic turnabout" several hours before Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon was to appoint the Likud's cabinet ministers, "Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein reversed an earlier decision" and closed a graft case against Tzahi Hanegbi "because the evidence against him would not stand up in court." He was "a suspect of fraud, deceit and election’s bribery as well as breach of trust."

Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz, chief of staff of Israel's armed forces, has acknowledged "selling off his stock portfolio just hours after Hezbollah gunmen kidnapped two Israeli soldiers July 12 triggering the five-week Lebanon war. While regulatory authorities have said he did nothing illegal, Reuters said many Israelis are questioning why cutting his own financial losses was on Halutz's mind at such a time."

Israel Katz, Likud MK, former Agricultural Minister. The police recommend trying him for breach of trust, cronyism, misuse of power and forgery. Katz, who was interrogated twice, is now facing indictment.

The list is much longer, so permit me to mention just some outlines:There were and still are investigations of some MK members: Ruchama Avraham, (Free flight tickets to USA, from Agresco). She paid back and was reprimanded.

Danny Nave, MK and former Health Minister – for political appointments. He recently resigned from the Knesset.

Salach Tariff, former Minister – indicted.

Shlomo Benziri, former minister of Work, Welfare and Health – was charged for receiving bribe from a constructor.

Neomi Blumenthal – former Likud MK – was sentenced to 8 months in prison, and 75 thousands NIS fine, for bribing Likud central committee members, “buying” their votes for the party’s primaries. Her sentence has been delayed for 2 months, at her request.

And on top: A huge scandal at the Tax Authority, involving 15 senior civil servants for bribery, fraud, political appointments and breach of trust. Among the accused are Shula Zaken, Olmert’s head of office, and her brother, Jacky Matza, one of the two directors of the Tax Authority together with Ethan Rove.

This is not just a recent problem either.

A WRMEA article of March 2003 also confirmed that "corruption is rampant in their country, which is home to a powerful criminal underworld. Drug money finances the smuggling of guns and people. Israel’s shady diamond industry may even exchange so-called “conflict” diamonds for weapons in the Congo and other African countries. Illegal foreign workers are imported and kept in terrible conditions, and prostitution is a big racket. Over the years, Russian, as well as South and North American Mafia have flourished in Israel. Crooked millionaires, like American fugitive and financier Marc Rich, have gained respectability by making contributions to Israeli universities and institutes.

Israeli banks are a favorite place for international money laundering. British media tycoon Robert Maxwell poured his ill-gotten gains into Israel, before his mysterious death on his yacht in 1992—after his money-laundering and outright thefts became public knowledge.

It should come as no surprise, then, that corruption also is rife in Israel’s government. Scandal has always dogged politicians in “the only democracy in the Middle East.” Perhaps because they now take it for granted, allegations of corruption never have much of a long-term impact on Israeli voters.

Sharon’s predecessors also were embroiled in funding irregularities or corruption scandals. Binyamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, always were up to their necks in charges and investigations, only to emerge unscathed, ready to run again. Ehud Barak remains enmeshed in a scandal involving shell companies that poured foreign funds into his election campaign. In 1977, allegations of corruption were instrumental in the late Yitzhak Rabin’s fall from power."

There is currently yet another scandal, this time surrounding Avigdor Lieberman. This from Haaretz on 25 January 2009: "The National Unit for Fraud Investigation on Sunday detained seven people for questioning as part of an investigation into MK Avigdor Lieberman, including Lieberman's daughter Michal and his attorney Yoav Meni."

The same paper published this the following day: "Police suspect Lieberman of money laundering, fraud and breach of trust. Sources in the national fraud squad said Sunday that the evidence gathered against Lieberman in recent months was far more serious and substantial than anything that has been previously published."

The Lieberman mafia has apparently an "international nature, encompassing countries from Cyprus to Ukraine". All this from the man who has been called "a Jewish Hitler".

Related photos / videos

One of those being held is the suspected organiser of the fraud, which used stock market operations and forgery to pump up the share price of a British company, Spain's interior ministry said in a statement.

Police said the SeriousCrime Office alleged the massive swindle began in 2003 and involved the fraudulent sale of shares in a fictitious company which had assets totalling £370 million when it began trading on the LSE's AIM market in 2005.

The arrests were made in Madrid, Alicante and Barcelona. Spanish National Radio reported that one of those arrested was an agent for Mossad - the Israeli intelligence service.

Four men were arrested in Barcelona and one each in Madrid and Elche, just inland from the Costa Blanca near Alicante, in south-east Spain. Five of those held are Spanish and the other comes from Argentina.

As well as the arrests Spanish detectives also seized a large quantity of documents and several computers."

30 January 2009

If the Director General of the BBC has trouble with the definition of impartiality, perhaps he should turn to his Bible rather than his dictionary.

There are two stories I can think of straightaway that should offer some guidance. The judgement of Solomon is one.

King Solomon offered to act impartially by cutting a baby in half for the benefit of two women claiming to be its mother.

But Solomon made his judgement in the firm belief the true mother wouldn’t permit her child to die. In contrast, by claiming his decision not to broadcast the Gaza emergency aid appeal demonstrates BBC impartiality, Mark Thompson put the lives of many mothers, children and babies at risk. King Solomon knew no good mother would sacrifice her infant for the sake of impartiality. And he was right. By intervening to save her child, the rightful mother exposed the impostor. Mark Thompson’s decision was wrong, not only because he hasn’t allowed intervention of any kind.

He can’t argue with the comparison because in making a decision regarding the lives of people he assumed the mantle of king. When lives depend on such decisions it is better to sacrifice impartiality than babies.

The Director General of the BBC placed himself in the role of Solomon while behaving like the phoney mother.

I detect a certain amount of cowardice in his decision. In reality, nobody asked him to make it; he chose to make it. And he decided not doing the right thing was a sign of impartiality.

Yet Thompson couldn’t assume the Israeli authorities would think he was acting impartially had the appeal been aired without giving them the benefit of the doubt by asking them in the first place. On the other hand, if he did ask, and the Israelis told him he would be acting partially by airing it, he would be taking advice from an impartial source.

So who did he suppose would object? If it wasn’t the Palestinians, the Israelis, the British government or the viewers, and if it isn’t a contradiction, in whose interests was he acting impartially? Surely impartiality of this stratospheric order must be of benefit to someone? It certainly hasn’t benefited the BBC in any way.

The second Biblical story relevant to the decision is the tale of the Good Samaritan. The Good Samaritan didn’t stop to question how, or why, his enemy had received his injuries. He just helped.

There is no way of demonstrating the sort of ‘higher than thou’ impartiality Mark Thompson claims for actions that amount to inaction. Would he want an ambulance crew to pause and discuss ethics at the scene of a vicious assault had his child been injured?

By refusing the appeal, at the same time as not accepting responsibility for the consequences, he shows himself unqualified to make the decision. Rather than demonstrating the impartiality he claims, he has attracted the greatest number of accusations of partiality in the entire history of the BBC. Licence payers have rightly judged him on the inevitable consequences for Gaza, which they view as evidence of partiality. There would have been no effects on Israel either way.

High-minded pronouncements need high-minded people. Cowards cannot make them. Upon taking his decision Mark Thompson became responsible for the outcome. If that results in more deaths then Mark Thompson becomes responsible for those deaths. He cannot wash his hands of them.

Decision-making of this order requires all consequences to be taken into consideration. In fact, the only way to act impartially in these circumstances is not to worry whether one party or the other will perceive your actions as partial. That is the real definition of impartiality. Not only has Thompson succeeded in showing an inability to understand the concept, but also a total lack of true leadership. Where the wisdom of King Solomon was needed we got the disinterest of Pontius Pilate.

What Mark Thompson is really talking about is trying to appear impartial, not actually being impartial. He has prejudged how his acts will be perceived, and got it completely wrong. A braver man would admit his error of judgement and reverse the decision. A braver man would resign in the face of such overwhelming criticism. Mark Thompson is not such a man.

Impartial or not, there is no doubt his decision is immoral.

---------------------------------------------------------------

This was my own letter to Mark Thompson dated 27 January 2009:

Sir,

One cannot possibly take your protestations of impartiality seriously, especially taking the previous DEC appeal for Kosovo into consideration.

The 'fundamental reason' according to your own words is that "Gaza remains a major ongoing news story, in which humanitarian issues...are both at the heart of the story and contentious". You continue: "we concluded that we could not broadcast a free-standing appeal...without running the risk of reducing public confidence in the BBC's impartiality in its wider coverage of the story. Inevitably an appeal would use pictures which are the same or similar to those we would be using in our news programmes but would do so with the objective of encouraging public donations."

I have news for you Mr. Thompson. You have, by this action, done exactly what you professed not to. You have seriously reduced public confidence in the BBC impartiality and more specifically in the Director General's own impartiality.

Look what happens when we compare your words on Gaza and previous appeals with the previous Kosovo appeal. If we look at the BBC report on that appeal we find that on the day the BBC article was written 06 April 1999, Kosovo was still THE major ongoing news story. In fact, if we look to the right of the article on the appeal we can see links to other articles which confirm that while the BBC aired the appeal, NATO was in the middle of bombing, in fact, it was according to NATO the "Heaviest bombings yet "! We also find that humanitarian issues were at the very heart of the story and contentious! In fact, they were what Blair claimed were the reasons for NATO bombing Serbia...Indeed the night before the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) began Operation Allied Force - the NATO blitz on Serbia - Tony Blair declared ""We must act to save thousands of innocent men, women and children from humanitarian catastrophe." (Blair: 'We must act - to save thousands of innocent men, women and children,' The Guardian, March 23, 1999). The day of the Blitz President Clinton explained to the American people that the NATO air campaign was intended to avoid "an even crueler and costlier war"; "to prevent a wider war in Europe"; and to "seriously damage the Serbian military's capacity to harm the people of Kosovo": Describing the Serbian Army's assault, he stated: "This is not war in the traditional sense. It is an attack by tanks and artillery on a largely defenseless people...Our mission is clear: to demonstrate the seriousness of NATO's purpose so that the Serbian leaders understand the imperative of reversing course; to deter an even bloodier offensive against innocent civilians in Kosovo and, if necessary, to seriously damage the Serbian military's capacity to harm the people of Kosovo. In short, if President Milosevic will not make peace, we will limit his ability to make war."(President Bill Clinton, address to the nation, Washington, D.C., March 24, 1999)Contentious, as unlike Israel's 'right to defend itself from Hamas attacks', no mention was made of Serbia's right to defend its ethnic population from attacks by the KLA, described by President Bill Clinton's special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, as, "without any questions, a terrorist group.". Indeed George Robertson, then UK Defence Secretary and later NATO Secretary General, stated before the House of Commons that until mid-January 1999, "the Kosovo Liberation Army [KLA] was responsible for more deaths in Kosovo than the Serbian authorities had been". (Quoted, Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival, Routledge, 2003, p.56) Hardly, the same case in Gaza...The appeal itself was read by the BBC's own Jill Dando, who I had the fortune to meet and work with here in Spain during the filming of a Holiday programme. With the Gaza appeal, DEC are only asking for airtime.

The images used? The same as those the BBC was using in its news programmes, and which it did with the objective of encouraging public donations.

So what's going on Mr. Thompson? This is clearly a blatant example of double standards.

You see I for one, have lost completely and utterly any confidence in you personally, and in your ability to lead an independent and impartial BBC. This was exacerbated when I read about your 2005 visit to Jerusalem and your meeting with the war criminal Ariel Sharon in The Independent. According to the Independent your visit was not published in the UK, and was "seized upon in Israel as evidence that Thompson, who took office in 2004, intends to build bridges with the country's political class."

The article continued:

"Sources at the Beeb also suspect that it heralds a "softening" to the corporation's unofficial editorial line on the Middle East."This was the first visit of its kind by any serving director general, so it's clearly a significant development," I'm told."Not many people know this, but Mark is actually a deeply religious man. He's a Catholic, but his wife is Jewish, and he has a far greater regard for the Israeli cause than some of his predecessors."Understandably, an official BBC spokesman was anxious to downplay talk of an exclusively pro-Israeli charm offensive."

When someone in your position takes actions that can be construed as for personal ambitions or reasons its time for you to do the honourable thing and fall on your sword. Resign now!

I am rather concerned. I have reason to believe a foreign terrorist organisation has placed agents of influence inside the BBC. Not only inside but in very influential positions.

This terrorist organisation has as its aim the intent to destroy, a national, ethnical & racial group - a crime against humanity that all people the wold over are obliged by international law to act to prevent. These terrorists are inexplicably not on the list of subscribed organisations. This organisation has already penetrated and runs an entire state and has done for 60 years.

Indeed, Prof Avi Shlaim, professor of international relations at the University of Oxford, Fellow of St. Anthony's College and the British Academy wrote recently in the Guardian, on "2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders".

Past leaders of this gangster state were members of the terrorist organisatiosn that killed British servicemen, and they have inculcated their whole society with their terrorist ideals. Indeed their present leaders and in fact all their leaders for the last 40 years have carried out terrorist acts, crimes against humanity and genocide without rest. This has made the whole world a very dangerous place, and through their infiltration into influential positions in our state broadcaster and other parts of our government such as Parliament - see Labour and Conservative Friends of Israel - have contributed to making our country a target for revenge attacks by other terrorist organisations.

Surely it is a threat to our national Security to have a foreign government controlling the state broadcaster?

This is exactly what has happened. I formally accuse Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC, of being one such agent of influence of Israel. After a secret meeting with the Capo of this mafia state in 2005, we have seen our state broadcaster the BBC unceasingly publish this foreign terrorist organisation's' propaganda. It is entirely possible this man was recruited by his own wife who could have loyalty issues. She could even be his handler.

I urge you to investigate this matter with the utmost urgency as the leaders of these terrorists appear to be entirely out of control and could launch an attack on a Persian Gulf country that would definitely affect our national Security and that of all British citizens the world over.

It would be useful if this agent was outed: arrested and imprisoned as soon as possible. Having seen a few episodes of Spooks, I know you are quite good at this sort of thing, so I leave it in your capable hands.

29 January 2009

Sir Gerald Kaufman, the veteran Labour MP, yesterday compared the actions of Israeli troops in Gaza to the Nazis who forced his family to flee Poland.

During a Commons debate on the fighting in Gaza, he urged the government to impose an arms embargo on Israel.

Sir Gerald, who was brought up as an orthodox Jew and Zionist, said: "My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town a German soldier shot her dead in her bed.

"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."

He said the claim that many of the Palestinian victims were militants "was the reply of the Nazi" and added: "I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants."

"It appears that Israel lost. It has failed to deliver on most of its declared goals.

But Israel's military attack does not only affect the "Palestinian problem" but has widespread regional implications for any future political or military engagement with Iran. "We should work to punish all of the members of the axis of evil..." said Olmert when he announced the ceasefire, "Hamas was supported by Iran, which in addition to trying to achieve regional hegemony is trying to consolidate its power in Gaza."

"Israel has a firm grip on the Palestinian national leadership"

"Israel has strong allies in the Arab world"

"American support for Israel is unshakable, as usual"

"Iran was very much on the agenda."

"Israel has strong European allies"

"Finally, Israel is undeterred by the United Nations and international law"

Stormy cabinet session opens government's week, as ministers call for stronger retaliation against Qassam fire. 'We have to set a clear goal,' says Transportation Minister Mofaz. 'Any other country would have already gone in and level the area,' adds interior minister

Attila SomfalviPublished: 02.10.08, 13:38 / Israel News

Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit suggested obliterating a Gaza neighborhood in response to Saturday's Qassam fire on Sderot, saying "any other country would have already gone in and level the area, which is exactly what I thing the IDF should do – decide on a neighborhood in Gaza and level it."

Israel, he added should provide residents with due warning: "We should let them know 'you have to leave, this area will be taken down tomorrow' and just take it down – that will show them we mean business. Sporadic actions are good," added Sheetrit, "but they're not good enough."

EmpathyOlmert on Sderot: Anger is not an action plan / Attila Somfalvi

Prime minister addresses rocket attack on southern town during weekly cabinet meeting, says residents' anger is 'understandable and natural, but what is needed is systematic and organized action over time.' Minister Dichter cites sections of Winograd report, says 'we mustn't conduct a strategy of luck.' Minister Yishai: Failure to make a significant decision on situation may lead to a catastrophe

Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz tried to understand the nature of the Gaza operation: "We have yet to define the purpose of the Gaza operation. Is it deterrence? Is it reducing or stopping Qassam fire and terror? We have to set a clear goal and derive the operation from it, with the emphasis being on continuance.

"We have to target the four focals of gravity: The leadership, the military wings, the infrastructure and the financing. Why aren’t we going after Mahmoud al-Zahar (of Hamas), who is directly responsible for shooting?"

Mofaz further of the neglected fence project in the area near the West Bank city of Hebron: "Why was this project stopped? Two governments approved the budgets for this fence. This is a grave omission. Someone has to oversee government decisions."

Vice Premier Haim Ramon reiterated, saying "the fact that the fence's finding didn't come through is a failure which will end up costing us in blood. This is the government's responsibility."

As for the situation in Gaza, in Ramon's opinion, Israel has to "cut off the power and directly link its supply to Qassam fire. Qassams are a war crime."

The ministers further discussed Saturday's Qassam attack on Sderot, which seriously injured eight-year-old Osher Tuito and his 19-year-old brother Rami.

"I wish the injured in Sderot a full recovery. There is no doubt that we all share the pain, and the anger is understandable and natural, but the anger is not an action plan," said Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

"We need systematic and organized action over time. We will go on and reach all elements of terror without being considerate towards anyone," he added.

Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter chose to cite parts from the Winograd report on the lessons of the Second Lebanon War, matching the conclusions to the reality in Gaza: "The results of the raids are local and limited, causing dissatisfaction among the commanders and fighters," Dichter read.

"In the meantime, the home front is under an extensive Qassam attack. The home front is sustaining casualties and its civil functioning is badly damaged, but no military operation is prepared to give an answer to the situation."

You state that "after seizing the West Bank, Golan Heights and Gaza Strip during the war, Israeli leaders decided to start building settlements and eventually incorporate them into a "greater Israel." Thus, 1967 marks the beginning of Israel's settlements project".

Your colleague Prof. Mearsheimer, in his Jan 26 article in the American Conservative (1), talked about the "real goals of Operation Cast Lead", and described them thus: "The actual purpose is connected to Israel’s long-term vision of how it intends to live with millions of Palestinians in its midst. It is part of a broader strategic goal: the creation of a “Greater Israel.” Specifically, Israel’s leaders remain determined to control all of what used to be known as Mandate Palestine, which includes Gaza and the West Bank."

Prof Avi Shlaim, Fellow of St. Anthony's College, Oxford and the British Academy stated in his January 07 article in the UK Guardian newspaper (2): "The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times."

Prof. Noam Chomsky in his recent article informs us of the methods the Israelis use and the coverage given to these methods by even Israeli rabbinical authorities: "They are not marginal figures. On the contrary, they are highly influential in the army and in the settler movement, who Zertal and Eldar reveal to be "lords of the land," with enormous impact on policy. Soldiers fighting in northern Gaza were afforded an "inspirational" visit from two leading rabbis, who explained to them that there are no "innocents" in Gaza, so everyone there is a legitimate target, quoting a famous passage from Psalms calling on the Lord to seize the infants of Israel's oppressors and dash them against the rocks. The rabbis were breaking no new ground. A year earlier, the former chief Sephardic rabbi wrote to Prime Minister Olmert, informing him that all civilians in Gaza are collectively guilty for rocket attacks, so that there is "absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings," as the Jerusalem Post reported his ruling. His son, chief rabbi of Safed, elaborated: "If they don't stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand, and if they do not stop after 1,000 then we must kill 10,000. If they still don't stop we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop." (3)

Last February, according to Haaretz (4), Israeli "Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai went as far as threatening a “shoah,” the Hebrew word for holocaust or disaster."

In August 2006, Edward S. Herman and Grace Kwinjeh wrote (5): "Back in 1948, David Ben-Gurion was clear that "We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population." Fifty years later, in 1998, Ariel Sharon made the same point about the centrality of ethnic cleansing in Israeli policy: "It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonization or Jewish state without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands." On May 24, 2006, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a joint session of congress that "I believed and to this day still believe, in our people's eternal and historic right to this entire land."

Curiously enough in neither Prof. Mearsheimer's, Prof. Shlaim's nor your own article do we find the word 'genocide' even once. Why not sir? Everything I have read about Israeli methods concur with the description in the Genocide Convention.

Edward S. Herman and Grace Kwinjeh make another point: "This drive to "redeem the land," requiring the takeover of land in the possession of others by force, also constitutes a model case of a quest for a "Greater" entity - here a Greater Israel - a drive which in the case of Milosevic's and the Serbs' alleged drive for a "Greater Serbia" was presented as a prime element of illegal activity in the ICTY indictment of Milosevic"

On March 24, 1999, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) began Operation Allied Force against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. That evening, President Bill Clinton explained to the American people that the NATO air campaign was intended to avoid "an even crueler and costlier war"; "to prevent a wider war in Europe"; and to "seriously damage the Serbian military's capacity to harm the people of Kosovo."

Describing the Serbian Army's assault, he stated: "This is not war in the traditional sense. It is an attack by tanks and artillery on a largely defenseless people...Our mission is clear: to demonstrate the seriousness of NATO's purpose so that the Serbian leaders understand the imperative of reversing course; to deter an even bloodier offensive against innocent civilians in Kosovo and, if necessary, to seriously damage the Serbian military's capacity to harm the people of Kosovo. In short, if President Milosevic will not make peace, we will limit his ability to make war."(6)

Tony Blair had said much the same the day before, on 23 March 1999: "We must act to save thousands of innocent men, women and children from humanitarian catastrophe." Blair described the emergency: "Let me give the House an indication of the scale of what is happening: a quarter of a million Kosovars, more than 10 per cent of the population, are now homeless as a result of repression by Serb forces... Since last summer 2000 people have died." (7)

No mention was made of Serbia's right to defend its ethnic population from attacks by the KLA, described by President Bill Clinton's special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, as, "without any questions, a terrorist group." (8)

Indeed George Robertson, then UK Defence Secretary and later NATO Secretary General, stated before the House of Commons that until mid-January 1999, "the Kosovo Liberation Army [KLA] was responsible for more deaths in Kosovo than the Serbian authorities had been". (9)

What is the difference between Serbia and Israel? One is forced to accept Ed Hermann & Prof. Chomsky's thesis that "when terrorism is seen by U.S. officials as highly advantageous to U.S. interests, it is treated by those officials, and hence by the media, as a positive development and hence "constructive...When the terrorism is not especially helpful to U.S. interests but is carried out by an ally or client that U.S. officials want to placate or protect, the killing of large numbers of civilians is treated as of little interest and no evident moral concern-it is "benign" (10)

Presumably therefore we can expect you to support an ad-hoc international war crimes tribunal to judge past and present Israeli leaders - at least those still alive for genocide and war crimes... and denounce the hypocrisy of NATO actions against Serbia if they are not prepared for a similar military blitz on Israel...

(1) Another War, Another Defeat By John J. MearsheimerJanuary 26, 2009 Issue The American Conservativehttp://www.amconmag.com/article/2009/jan/26/00006/

(2) How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe By Avi Shlaim, The Guardian, Wednesday 7 January 2009http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine

GIFTS (WITH LOVE) FROM THE CHILDREN OF PEACE-LOVING & CIVILIZED COUNTRIES

THE CLASSIC PROPAGANDA MACHINE - YOU WILL FIND THE PICTURE IN BLACK & WHITE IN ALL AMERICAN AND SOME OTHER WESTERN COUNTRIES HISTORY BOOKS, ENCYCLOPAEDIAS, LIBRARIES, MUSEUMS… THAT DEPICTS A YOUNG JEWISH BOY WITH HIS HANDS UP WHILE NAZI TROOPS POINT THEIR GUNS AT HIM AND HIS FAMILY IN ORDER TO EXPEL THEM FROM THEIR HOMES… (IT’S SUPPOSED TO MAKE YOU SYMPATHIZE WITH THE VICTIMS & TO SUPPORT THEIR CAUSE FOR JUSTICE & A HOMELAND)

El pié de foto dice: "Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (C) stands with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero (R) in Jerusalem January 18, 2009, in this picture released by the Israeli Government Press Office (GPO). Olmert said on Sunday that he wanted to pull his forces out of the Gaza Strip as soon as possible following the ceasefire declarations made by Israel and Hamas earlier in the day. REUTERS/Avi Ohayon/GPO/Handout (JERUSALEM)."

"Yesterday, we saw streets and alleyways littered with evidence of the use of white phosphorus, including still burning wedges and the remnants of the shells and canisters fired by the Israeli army," said Christopher Cobb-Smith, a weapons expert who is in Gaza as part of the four-person Amnesty International team.

Donatella Rovera, Amnesty’s researcher on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories said that such extensive use of this weapon in Gaza's densely populated residential neighbourhoods is inherently indiscriminate. "Its repeated use in this manner, despite evidence of its indiscriminate effects and its toll on civilians, is a war crime," she said

"Artillery is an area weapon; not good for pinpoint targeting. The fact that these munitions, which are usually used as ground burst, were fired as air bursts increases the likely size of the danger area,” said Chris Cobb-Smith.

15 January 2009

On March 24, 1999, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) began Operation Allied Force against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. That evening, President Bill Clinton explained to the American people that the NATO air campaign was intended to avoid "an even crueler and costlier war"; "to prevent a wider war in Europe"; and to "seriously damage the Serbian military's capacity to harm the people of Kosovo."

Describing the Serbian Army's assault, he stated: "This is not war in the traditional sense. It is an attack by tanks and artillery on a largely defenseless people...Our mission is clear: to demonstrate the seriousness of NATO's purpose so that the Serbian leaders understand the imperative of reversing course; to deter an even bloodier offensive against innocent civilians in Kosovo and, if necessary, to seriously damage the Serbian military's capacity to harm the people of Kosovo. In short, if President Milosevic will not make peace, we will limit his ability to make war."(President Bill Clinton, address to the nation, Washington, D.C., March 24, 1999)

Tony Blair had said much the same the day before, on 23 March 1999: "We must act to save thousands of innocent men, women and children from humanitarian catastrophe."

No mention was made of Serbia's right to defend its ethnic population from attacks by the KLA, described by President Bill Clinton's special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, as, "without any questions, a terrorist group.". Indeed George Robertson, then UK Defence Secretary and later NATO Secretary General, stated before the House of Commons that until mid-January 1999, "the Kosovo Liberation Army [KLA] was responsible for more deaths in Kosovo than the Serbian authorities had been". (Quoted, Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival, Routledge, 2003, p.56)

Presumably, and to avoid charges of rank hypocrisy, we can now expect a NATO blitz of Israel?

"The hasbara brigade strikes again! You always hear about Israeli attempts at media manipulation. Everyone knows it's going on but usually the process happens through cyber insurgents like those involved with Giyus (and its media monitoring software, Megaphone). Now, we know that the Israeli foreign ministry itself is orchestrating propaganda efforts designed to flood news websites with pro-Israel arguments and information."

07 January 2009

I reproduce this Guardian article in full considering the importance of the person who wrote it and its content.

It is written by Avi Shlaim, Fellow of St Antony's College and a Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford. In 2006 he was elected Fellow of the British Academy. Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy.

"The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel's vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration's complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.

Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.

Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.

In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace.

The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent political existence on their land.

Israel's settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison.

Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of Lebanon. In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.

America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.

As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes. Israel's propaganda machine persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.

Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that included Hamas.

It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and recapture power. Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah coup.

The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel's terms. The undeclared aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for independence and statehood.

The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up to the election, all the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the bit to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain left on their reputation by the failure of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in July 2006. Israel's cynical leaders could also count on apathy and impotence of the pro-western Arab regimes and on blind support from President Bush in the twilight of his term in the White House. Bush readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on Hamas, vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.

As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been inverted - a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and shooting".

To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict. Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak - terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government. Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in self-defence but its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.

Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel's entire record is one of unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international humanitarian law.

The brutality of Israel's soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza, Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire agreements; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population; and that Israel's forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably successful in getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.

A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It di d so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel's insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are incalculable.

No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel's concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and compromises.

This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so."

Pages

About Me

"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. "

-- John Stuart Mill

"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis." -